Original content and news about the autism epidemic from the perspective that autism is treatable. Anaylsis of current media treatment of autism and the environmental causes of autism.

Thanks to Jeannette Bishop for this unofficial text of Posey remarks on U.S. House floor: TO BEGIN WITH, I AM ABSOLUTELY, RESOLUTEY PRO-VACCINE. Advancements in medical immunization have saved countless lives and greatly benefitted public health. That being said, it's...

Olmsted's Original UPI Series

Latest Vaccine/Autism “Safety” Study Based on Flawed Data

Latest Vaccine/Autism “Safety” Study Based on Flawed
Data

The Canary Party calls on reporters to take a
second look at the CDC’s biased science.

(Cambridge,
MA) “The CDC continued its propaganda campaign on behalf of its bloated vaccine
schedule last week,” said Mark Blaxill, Chairman of the Canary Party. “Despite significant scientific evidence
showing connections between vaccines and autism, and deep problems with CDC’s
vaccine safety science, few reporters dug deeper into the quality of this new
study (DeStefano et al. 2013).” As recently noted in a
peer-reviewed publication, Drs Catherine DeSoto and Robert Hitlan[1] documented major methodological flaws
in the 2010 CDC study (Price et al.) said
to
disprove any link between a mercury preservative in vaccines and autism. This second paper regarding antigens, by CDC
staffer Frank DeStefano and colleagues, uses the exact same flawed data set, again to deny the link
between vaccines and autism.

“How
deeply flawed was DeStefano’s analysis?” continues Blaxill, “Simply put, the
study design could not have been more biased. The number, type and timing of
vaccines that US children receive are a function of birth year: recommendations
for DTP, Rotavirus and Varicella all changed during the years of the study,
depending on the year the child was born.
But the CDC data set used a data sample that matched cases and controls
by birth year and then only analyzed the differences within their patched
groupings (called “strata” in statistics). Matching on birth year meant nearly all
variation associated with how many vaccines were recommended was removed from the
study as a starting point. If they had
said ‘we are controlling for the vaccine schedule the child followed’ in an
analysis of how safe the vaccine schedule was, this would have seemed absurd.
But that is exactly what they did.”

“The model they were
trying to test in their first study was whether exposure to Thimerosal via
vaccination was associated with any increased risk of autism. To do this, they needed to compare persons with different levels of
exposure. They could not do so
because they matched on birth-year, which itself defines exposure level. This ensures that cases were only compared to
controls with the same exposure,” said lead author Dr. Catherine DeSoto. “Children
who received high and low exposure were not compared with their methods. It is
like testing if smoking causes lung cancer but only comparing persons with and
without cancer who smoked exactly the same amount -- and then statistically testing
if they smoked different amounts. The design flaw is called overmatching, and it makes
the results of both studies invalid.”

“There are additional valid concerns about the
study design that have been raised by others and the press should be reporting
them,” states Blaxill. “The
Canary Party maintains that the CDC, as a government entity, is obligated to
promote the official vaccine schedule, and therefore the media should critically
review any CDC statements regarding vaccine safety.”

The Canary
Party was founded in 2011 to address the crisis in
the health of children and other vulnerable groups and to stand up for the
victims of medical injuries, especially from vaccines. The Canary
Party can provide a list of peer-reviewed research performed by independent
scientists documenting neural risks associated with vaccination. Canary Party
can also provide a list of persons with documented cases of vaccine damage. “We
encourage reporters to question statements they are given” said Blaxill, “and to
contact the doctors and scientists who are doing unconflicted work on the issue.”

If an outsider were to look into the CDC studies in reference to the autism/vaccine research link, and without prior knowledge of the autism/vaccine controversy, they would wonder why all of the studies were so flawed.